Rico Dredd: The Titan Years

by Michael Carroll

  My shot was actually a little off. Maybe I was out of practice, but more likely it was because the Kolibri’s barrel-length is just too short to permit perfectly accurate aim. I hit Sims square in the forehead. I’d been aiming for his left eye. That still bugs me a little, but it’s not healthy to dwell on stuff like that. The outcome was the same anyway: Sims toppled over backwards, dead, and Kassir flinched.

  That flinch was enough for Genoa. She was a head shorter than Kassir and maybe twenty kilos lighter, but she was faster and even more vicious.

  Even though my instincts were yelling at me to just finish Kassir, I overrode them and I stepped back to watch the fight.

  Genoa’s first move was her trademark elbow to the stomach. If she’d been fighting a male, that would have been immediately followed by a punch to the groin. Instead, and because Kassir was still armed with a baton, Genoa formed her fingers into a point and jabbed up at Kassir’s right armpit. There’s a handy nerve-cluster there, and if you strike it with enough force, the target’s arm will spasm and she’ll drop her weapon.

  Genoa caught the baton before it hit the ground, but as she was adjusting her grip on it, Kassir slammed a foot into her kidneys with enough force to almost knock Genoa sideways.

  Next came a blur of swings, blocks, strikes and dodges from both of them and I had to resist the urge to offer suggestions.

  Vivean Kassir was tough, but no match for Genoa Amin. The fight’s decisive move was a powerful swing of the baton that was almost stopped by Kassir’s front teeth.

  Almost.

  Kassir staggered backwards, spitting out blood and fragments of broken teeth through split lips. She tried to swear at Genoa, but it was hard to understand what she was saying.

  Genoa wrapped it up with a spinning, contorted leap: her right foot crashed into Kassir’s already-weakened jaw, then it was followed by a baton-strike to the temple.

  As Kassir crumpled to the ground, Genoa straightened herself up, flexed her arms a little, then crouched to use Kassir’s shirt to wipe the blood off the baton. As she did so, she casually asked me, “So, Rico, I’ve been wonderin’. When, exactly, were ye planning to tell me that yeh were carryin’ a drokkin’ gun?”

  Chapter Eleven

  IT TOOK US four minutes to get Sims out of his environment suit, and another two to get Genoa into it. It wasn’t a great fit, but then the suits really only came in one size, not counting Southern Brennan’s bespoke outfit.

  The door to the generator room opened smoothly and silently on well-greased hinges, and we dragged Sims and Kassir inside.

  I always thought it’d be the best place to hide in the event of a disaster. Solid construction, only one entrance, lot of shadowy nooks. It’s a mess of gantries and staircases and dangling chains and large machines that hum and vibrate so strongly they’re bolted to the ground to stop them from juddering their way across the room.

  Inside, eight inmates stood in a line, facing us, each one tightly clutching a makeshift club or spear. My guess is that they would have rushed us before now, if not for the shot that had killed Sims. Most of them looked nervous.

  “We’re going to end this,” I told them. “You get in the way, you’ll be hurt. Everyone understand that?”

  The man on the far right, Donal Pangione—a permanently calm thirty-something with a long, matted beard and only thee remaining digits on each hand—nodded and let his spear drop. “Sure. Yeah.”

  He was the one I wanted, a former engineer, and no doubt hand-picked by Sims and Kassir. Possibly they’d even bookmarked him years ago just in case. If so, that was smart: plan your survival team in advance because it’s a lot more tricky when there’s fire or bullets involved. It was something I realised I should have done.

  I pointed to the generator, towering over everything else in the room. “You can shut that down and bring it back online again?”

  Pangione said, “I can. Worked on subatomic compression star-drives before—”

  “That’s good enough.” I turned to Genoa. “You think you can handle them?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t want them ambushing me.” She paused, then added, “Give me the gun.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll give it yeh back when we’re done, Rico! I can look after myself, but I can’t watch these people and watch the door without a deterrent to prevent some drokker cavin’ my head in with a wrench.”

  “All right.” I passed the weapon to her as we strode towards the generator, and the others backed away, watching us. Softly, I told Genoa, “The mag’s got eleven rounds left, then that’s it. Effective range is a lot closer than you’d like, it doesn’t pack much of a punch and I don’t think it’s very accurate, either. But it’s still a gun, so maybe that’ll be enough to keep them away.”

  She started to tuck the gun into a pouch on her environment suit’s belt, but I stopped her. “You should hold it first, with the gloves on. Get a feel for it. And be careful because there’s no trigger-guard.”

  She practised pulling the gun from her pouch a couple of times. I’d seen faster turtles.

  “What the hell kind of a criminal were you, anyway, Genoa?”

  “The nice kind. I’ve never fired a gun. Never even held one before.”

  “I heard you were in for murder.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Yeh think I need a gun to commit murder? Hah.” She turned the weapon over in her hands. “Where’s the satisfaction with something like this? With a knife yeh get to be close enough to feel the drokker’s last breath. A metre of piano-wire and yeh can feel them struggling. Even with an ordinary carpenter’s hammer there’s that lovely crack as it hits, y’know? The feeling as the shock ripples up yer arm. This thing...” She sneered. “A gun is a coward’s weapon, Dredd. This is for killers who are too scared to get their hands dirty. Amateurs.”

  I didn’t really know what to say to that. I guess there had always been a part of me so enamoured of her that it wouldn’t let me really believe that she deserved to be on Titan. She was short and cute—“pixie-like,” someone once described her—and most of the time was friendly and bubbly and smiling.

  But you don’t end up on Titan because of an administrative error. A seat on the shuttle is hard-earned.

  I began, “Jovis... Look, Genoa—”

  “That’s not my name, yeh drokkin’ idiot!” She stepped back, clearly exasperated.

  I glanced around at the others: they were watching. I knew what was coming and I didn’t want anyone to witness it.

  But Genoa—or Lauren—didn’t have the same penchant for discretion. “Damn it, Rico. I know yeh’ve kept me on a pedestal these past few years, but yeh have to grow up sometime! This”—she pointed to me, then herself, then back to me again—“this is nothing. There’s nothing between us. There’s no romance waitin’ in the wings for the right moment. For cryin’ out loud, man, can yeh not see the pattern?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeh did the same thing with that Sov Judge! Kurya. Same thing. Always including her, checking in with her”—Genoa made air-quotes—“taking care of her. She doesn’t need yeh, she doesn’t want yeh. I mean, when was the last time there was an actual conversation between ye that she initiated?” She sighed long and loud. “Get over yourself, Rico. Yer a Judge who went bad. That doesn’t make yeh special. This is the planet of the Judges who went bad.”

  She turned away, then abruptly turned back. “And my name is Lauren McRitchie. Genoa Amin was a joke. Some folks here started callin’ me that when I got here, because of my accent. D’yeh know wha’ I mean?”

  I can’t pretend that didn’t hurt. I’m human, despite appearances.

  And she was wrong about me idolising her and Kurya. Sure, I liked them both, but I wasn’t the love-starved puppy that she seemed to think I was.

  But this wasn’t the time to correct her. We both had jobs to do.

  I said, “Sure. I know that. I just like the name Genoa. It suits you. Now are you going to be a
ble to handle this? We’ve only got one shot at it.”

  “I can do it.”

  I nodded. “Good.” I looked around, spotted Donal Pangione, and said, “You, the engineer. If we shut down the generator right now, how long before we use up all the oxygen in the complex?”

  He shrugged. “People consume about six hundred litres of oxygen per day. Assuming that there’s about two hundred of us still breathing, that’s a hundred and twenty thousand litres. A cubic metre is a thousand litres, so that’s one-twenty cubic metres per day consumed by everyone.”

  Pangione slowly turned around in a complete circle. “Very rough guess... Taking in the sizes of all the prison’s buildings, including the enclosed mines and tunnels... Say it’s about half a million cubic metres of air. Twenty per cent of the air is oxygen, so that’s a hundred thousand cubic metres of O2. Divide that by one-twenty... We’re looking at about eight hundred and thirty-three days. Or about two years, three months. Not counting oxygen we already have in tanks, or what might be generated by plant-life before then.”

  “So they won’t all suffocate before they starve.”

  “Assuming there are no leaks, and no fires. And no running internal combustion engines, or anything else that consumes oxygen.”

  “Good. Shut it down.”

  Pangione consider the order for a second. “Uh... no. No, that’d be bad.”

  “Genoa? I mean, Lauren? Persuade him.”

  I don’t know what Pangione did to shut down the generator—that is, I saw him flipping switches and typing at the attached keyboard, but I didn’t understand the actual process—but a minute later there was the sudden absence of a constant background hum I hadn’t realised had been there. The overhead lights blinked out, everyone swayed from the sudden loss of the prison’s artificial gravity, and from different parts of the complex came a wave of soft thunks as security doors locked themselves shut, followed by a fresh wave of shouts and yells and muffled threats.

  The only real light in the generator room now came via the overhead skylights, until one of Pangione’s colleagues switched on a flashlight.

  I gestured for him to give me the flashlight, then asked, “How long before the loss of heat will be noticed?”

  “Depends on where everyone is,” Pangione said, gingerly nursing the fresh bruises on his arms and shins from Genoa’s persuasion. “The admin blocks are better insulated than anywhere else. They’ll feel the cold last. Couple of hours, maybe. Everywhere else... it could be a lot sooner. Especially in the mine and the tunnels.” He pointed down at the ground. “We got underfloor heating here, just enough to keep the frost at bay. But out there? Cold as my old man’s eyes when he’s talking about my mom.”

  Genoa said to me, “You should get moving. Don’t want to get there after they’ve frozen to death. It’s hard to negotiate with corpses.”

  As I left, I said, “If they’re corpses, I won’t need to negotiate.”

  That was a compelling idea, in some ways, but this wasn’t about killing everyone. It wasn’t even about making sure that the prison’s supplies weren’t in the hands of a deranged religious maniac. This was about everyone knowing who it was who’d saved the day.

  Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and be the hero.

  Chapter Twelve

  WITH THE POWER gone I had to navigate using only the light from Saturn—the flashlight would alert anyone watching, so it was for emergencies only—but it was enough for me to see my breath misting in the air. My polymer-laced skin meant that I didn’t feel any colder, but I could almost sense the heat dissipating all around me.

  Pastor Carbonara’s followers had barricaded all the doors and windows, and hadn’t left a sentry. They didn’t seem to be listening out for anyone knocking on the door, either. I checked every possible entrance, but no one was opening up.

  I could hear them, though. Constant low-level muttering. It was repetitive, almost soothing.

  It took me a minute to realise that they were praying.

  I wasn’t immediately concerned, but there was some urgency. As I said, I didn’t want them freezing to death before I could persuade them to open up.

  There was another way in. Most people claim to understand that they live in a three-dimensional universe, but they don’t really get it until they realise that any hole in a building is a door if someone can pass through it.

  I had to go back the way I came. Past the generator room, past the med-centre, back to the guards’ quarters, where I again found myself staring down the barrel of sub-warden Giambalvo’s gun.

  This time, the barrel was trembling with more than fear. Giambalvo appeared to be wearing three insulated jackets at the same time, her breath billowing out the narrow gap in the hoods.

  “Get into an environment suit,” I told her.

  “There aren’t any. The hell is going on, Dredd?”

  “Generator’s offline,” I said, pushing past her towards the guards’ lockers. “I need a rope. Twenty metres at least. And a standard tool-belt.”

  Giambalvo steered me towards an equipment cabinet. “Bottom shelf. What do you need it for?”

  There was no time to explain. As I fastened the tool-belt around my waist, I said, “Just hold tight. Seal yourself in somewhere—it’s going to get a lot colder in here.” I grabbed the coil of rope and slung it around my chest as I ran.

  At the door to the loading bay, I paused and told Giambalvo, “Don’t bolt this behind me—I might need to come back in this way, and that’ll be tricky if you’re dead.”

  I’d intended that to sound a lot more upbeat than it did.

  I pulled the door closed behind me and ran out through the loading bay. In the outer office, Jamison Yardley was still unconscious on the office floor, quietly drooling into his environment suit’s helmet. The drool was starting to freeze. At least the suit would keep him warm: I properly fastened the helmet and pulled him up into a sitting position, left him propped up against the wall. I was growing tired: if the prison’s artificial gravity had still been active, I might not have had the strength to lift him.

  I passed through the airlock, then I was back out in the Bronze. It felt almost comfortable, almost a relief to be outside again.

  Inside the prison, two hundred inmates and guards were slowly starving, or hiding, or fighting. Grud knew what the next couple of hours were going to be like, let alone the next few months.

  But outside I was in control. I knew what I was doing and I didn’t have to rely on anyone else.

  That’s the secret to a happy life: a job that needs to be done, and is just beyond the margins of your capabilities and experience so that it’s still a challenge, still rewarding when it’s been completed. For most of my time on Titan I’d been picking up rocks or hauling cables or pushing barrows loaded with ore or running a power-hammer. Hard work where the only challenge was brute strength.

  One of the advantages of being a mod on Titan is not needing an environment suit. They’re clumsy, awkward things. You’re constantly checking everything around you for anything on which the suit might snag, even your own equipment. The helmet forces you to turn at the waist if you want to see what’s happening either side of you, and the gloves mean you can’t easily pick up or manipulate small objects.

  Every external area of the prison and the mine is designed for people wearing suits. So when you don’t need one, things are very different.

  The buildings are suddenly scalable, for a start. Sure, the handholds and footholds aren’t much more than weld-seams and rivets, but when the gravity is only a seventh of Earth’s, that’s not a problem.

  I ran towards the side of the med-centre and jumped, aiming for a thin horizontal rail about halfway up. Years of hauling cables and swinging pickaxes had done a lot to strengthen my grip. I hauled myself hand over hand up the side of the four-storey building. I had to pass a window: I made out one of Doc Mollo’s assistants sitting cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in a bundle of insulating blankets. He was reading a
n old paperback novel as he absently poked his index finger inside his left ear while holding a scalpel with the same hand. The potential for disaster was so great that I almost stopped to watch.

  The roof of the med-centre was one of the highest points around—only the Admin building and the framework over the pit were taller—and I could see clear across the compound, but I hadn’t climbed up just for sightseeing purposes. On the far side I swung myself over the edge and dropped down to the roof of the long tunnel that led to the cell-blocks.

  It was windy up there and the tunnel-roof rattled constantly, which would easily mask my own footsteps as I ran from one end to the other.

  The tunnel butted against the D-Block perimeter wall, four metres above me. It would have been a simple task to jump, grab onto the edge and pull myself up, but I decided to climb: the risk of falling was too great, even under Titan’s low gravity.

  The roof of D-Block was gently sloped, easy to walk on. It was peppered with circular skylights, transparent plasteen strong enough to weather the worst of the moon’s storms.

  I crouched close to the nearest skylight to get my bearings. I was in the right place: inside, directly beneath me, was the sealed-off end of the uppermost southern corridor. The floor was three metres below, an easy enough drop if I’d been able to open the skylight; but even if I’d had the tools to open it, Titan’s dense, toxic atmosphere would rush in and kill everyone in seconds.

  But skylights are not the only openings. Halfway along the roof was a metre-square box, an emergency air vent, designed to help expel smoke or gas or airborne toxins. I’d seen similar vents in city blocks in Mega-City One, where they had strong bars on the outside to prevent any enterprising burglars from climbing through. Here on Titan, all the burglars were already on the inside.

  All but one.